Cruisin’ for a Contusion. Tom Cruise is espionage agent Ethan Hunt, in the big screen reboot of the 1966 television series, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE, who has to go rogue against his own agency to weed out a mole. But the agency thinks it’s him! (I don’t blame them – with that insufferable smirk and that mole-ish snout of his.) Nonetheless, man-toy … Read More
SCHINDLER’S LIST
The Ones That Got Away (alternate title in Germany?) He was German, a Nazi, a profiteer of slave labor, a philanderer, an adulterer, a confidence man and a traitor to his country. He was Oskar Schindler, who saved over 1,100 Jews from concentration camps in World War II. Reminds me of that joke “…but screw just one sheep…” in reverse. … Read More
MONEYBALL
When Statistics Became Sexy. Brad Pitt ends MONEYBALL with, “How can you not be romantic about baseball?” which is ironic, because he just spent the whole movie deconstructing The Great American Pastime’s romanticism with “sabermetrics” (a clinical mathematical process that focuses purely on statistics to choose players), wheeling and dealing at the highest levels of the baseball industry with wrath-of-God … Read More
A CIVIL ACTION
Justice IS blind – so can’t see Truth. In movies, the good guys always seem to win court cases. Over an ingratiating orchestra swell, no less. But in reality, good or bad has nothing to do with the outcome of court cases. It’s how you play the game. If you can afford to be in the game in the first … Read More
THE INTERPRETER
Lost In Translation. If you care about whether burnt-out political insurrectionists from fictitious African countries are assassinated or not, this slow-moving thriller is for you. Otherwise, you will watch THE INTERPRETER with one question dogging your suspension of disbelief: “How does a startlingly luminous beauty like Silvia Broome (Nicole Kidman) avoid being flirted with by every single male she comes … Read More
GANGS OF NEW YORK
An Army Of One – Daniel Day-Lewis. There are three reasons to watch Martin Scorsese’s superlative GANGS OF NEW YORK: Daniel. Day. Lewis. Marlon Brando as Don Vito Corleone, Al Pacino as Tony Montana, Gary Oldman as Sid Vicious, Val Kilmer as Doc Holliday and (to wax more modern) Hugh Jackman as Wolverine: iconic performances, one and all. Daniel Day-Lewis … Read More